The Siren Whisper

Caroline and Julie are lifelong friends, married with children and over forty, with parallel careers: they are both nurses. The one, Caroline, is blond, tall and thin. The other, Julie, is a brunette, of medium height, full-figured. They are very different from each other in personality: Caroline is sociable; Julie, shy. But they have always had a quiet, unspoken desire for each other.

One day, Julie learns that she has ovarian cancer: she might die. Julie talks about it with Caroline, they hold each other and cry. Then Julie reminds Caroline of a vow that they had made as teenagers a long time ago: "When we are over thirty, if we are both single or widows, I will lie down with you under the stars. I swear by the aurora borealis..."

Since they live in a small town somewhere between Montreal and Quebec, there are lots of aurora borealises. They laugh in each other's arms, it was all a joke, it was all for laughs. But they have always wanted to make love under the stars, under the aurora borealis. They could have had a Boston Marriage, you know, if not for the desire to get married with a man and have children. You have to do these things right, you know.

Then Julie says, all serious: "Come on, let's make love, Caroline! It's possible that I'm going to die...

When Caroline is a little hesitant, Julie pleads: "Please make love with me! It's you that I love!"

Then Caroline murmurs: "If I only had a cock..."

Julie, still in her arms, looks up with her sweet brown eyes and replies: "Two women can always send each other too, my dear..."

So they kiss, and that begins the love between two women, who are lifelong friends. They spend a romantic weekend at the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City, telling their husbands that they have to work. They have a night on the town, eating and drinking wine at one of the finest restaurants, dancing close together at certain bars. They wander up and down the small streets of the Basse-Ville, up and down the halls of the museums, arm in arm. They ride a carriage pulled by a percheron horse. They even sit together in a dark movie theatre and hold hands as they watch a movie. They make eyes, they flirt and caress each other. They devour each other with their eyes and their mouths. When they kiss, on the lips or on the fingers, it's magic. Every day, after they come back from Quebec, they leave each other text messages on their cell phones: "I love you." And: "I want you."

After making love at the Chateau Frontenac, they cuddle contentedly and sigh, but it's only a brief affair of the heart. Julie deteriorates rapidly, because the cancer has spread: Caroline can only cuddle her. So little by little, Julie dies at home in bed, surrounded by family and friends. The moment that she dies, Caroline cuddles her body in bed, her three children do too. Caroline kisses her tenderly on the lips, with tears in her eyes: "I love only you," she whispers.

A coroner comes to take away the body. That night, in the little kitchen, Julie's husband, Jim, weeps piteously at the table as he gets drunk with Caroline.

"I loved her," the big man sobs pathetically.

"Tell me about," Caroline replies, smiling sadly as she touches his hand lightly. "I loved her too..."

They talk about it, late into the night and early in the morning. Then all of a sudden, Caroline stands up and begins an impromptu striptease. Little by little, like a stripper, she strips naked as she walks back and forth across the floor of the little kitchen, a blonde panther. Jim can't believe it!

During the striptease, Caroline says to Jim, all seductive, ever the tease: "We were lovers, her and me, but that was a long time ago..."

Jim has the taste for her as he watches her walk across the floor while doing her striptease. After Caroline has removed each article of clothing, they devour each other with their mouths and feel each other up against the closed door to the basement. He fucks her hard against the door, but he withdraws his penis before he comes. Frenzied, she falls to her knees and gives him a blow job until he ejaculates in her face, in her hair, and in her open mouth. This is lust, not love, but she cries: "Fuck me in the ass, hard!"

So he sodomizes her with her arms extended, her torso spread over the kitchen table, until he comes, until she takes her foot as well. The sex is rough, but the physical pain of the sex with Jim is not worse than the psychic pain of losing a dear friend to cancer for Caroline. Both the pain and the ecstasy are unbearable for her. She feels herself torn into pieces but content. Stretched out on top of the table still, with her arms extended, Caroline smiles while panting: "Thank you..."

She showers and gets dressed, then she goes home. At home, early in the morning, she asks her husband, Richard, to hold her. "Julie's dead," she tells her husband as she cries.

"That's too bad," Richard replies, with sympathy in his voice. "That's too bad..."

They cuddle for a while, but he gets drunk on her body like Jim. She's very tired, but they make love in a slow and conventional way until he comes, without her coming, but she doesn't care: she only wants to sleep. She knows that her husband loves her, she loves him too. They have two children together, a boy and a girl. But she doesn't want her husband anymore: it's Julie that she wants. However, Caroline cannot yet accept that Julie is dead.

For a few months, maybe six months, Caroline is in mourning. She's depressed. For no apparent reason, she suddenly cries from time to time. So she sees a psychiatrist, who prescribes some medication. Richard is aware of her sorrow, without being aware that Caroline and Julie were lovers. He doesn't know that Caroline was unfaithful with Jim either. She doesn't want to have sex with him, but he thinks it's the medication to fight the depression. So they look for the correct medication with the psychiatrist.

Then there's a new nurse at the hospital where Caroline works. This nurse is mysterious, possessing something indefinable without really being pretty or beautiful. She's young, probably in her twenties, tall and thin like Caroline, but dark. She has a Creole beauty, tropical, with skin the colour of cinnamon, and long and frizzy hair the colour of the earth. Her laughing eyes are like the night, almost black. According to her name tag, her name is Bergenoute, an usual name. She has a certain allure, Bergenoute, like the Loralei. In her fantasies, she sees Bergenoute, spread out like the Eve before her on the rocks of an island in a strait under the stormy skies, whispering seductively: "Come!"

At work, during a break for dinner, Caroline sees Bergenoute again in the cafeteria, all alone at a table. Very shy at first, the normally sociable Caroline approaches her cautiously. She's afraid that she's too old for her Dulcinea, since she's in her forties while Bergenoute is probably in her twenties. However, when she sees Caroline standing in front of her, Bergenoute smiles and says hello. They introduce themselves, then Bergenoute asks Caroline to sit down; Caroline sits down across from her. They talk, they laugh. Bergenoute is very talkative, her manner, free and easy. She's twenty-eight years old, born in Haiti, but a Creole, of several races. But Caroline thinks that Bergenoute is checking her out too: it's the way she looks at her longer than it's appropriate to look at a stranger. It's the way she touches her on the hand casually, little touches that linger more and more. But Caroline doesn't care: she already has a crush on her. Bergenoute is magnificent to look at, very exotic, like a rare bird in the jungle, the quetzal, for example. So they make eyes at each other and touch knees under the table. Then Bergenoute offers while staring at Caroline: "I had a friend, but she isn't my friend anymore..."

Although Caroline is married, she replies: "I had a friend too, but she died of cancer..."

"That's too bad, my love," Bergenoute says softly, as she touches her on the hand again. "That's terrible..."

Before they go back to work, while still gazing at each other, Bergenoute smiles at her and lightly rubs the back of her hand with her index finger: "You're a lot of fun, Caroline, I like you. If you can hear the siren whisper like I do, call me some time..."

They stand up and hug each other before they leave each other. They kiss each other twice on the cheeks, but Bergenoute touches her ear lobe lightly with the tip of her tongue. Then she leaves a business card with her telephone number. So does Caroline.

"Call me sometime," Bergenoute repeats seductively.

That night, Caroline makes love with her husband. The sex is fantastic, dreadfully so. She takes her foot over and over again before she comes in a great climax. But it isn't her husband that she wants: she hears the same siren whisper, crying out loud like the siren of an ambulance.

She has the taste for another woman: Bergenoute.